Spelling Trouble. Nathan Reed

Two

      Jessica sat cross-legged on the counter and laid her broom carefully beside her. Berkeley fluttered down from the ceiling and perched on her shoulder. Felicity jumped up on to the counter too, arched her back, stretched, circled three times and finally settled down on Jessica’s lap, purring loudly.

      Miss Strega rapped her knuckles on Spelling Made Easy. “If you are all sure you’re comfortable, I’ll begin. There are several Spelling techniques that you will have to learn as part of your training but. . .”

      “How many?” Jessica interrupted.

      “Well, there’s Spelling With Brews and Potions; Spelling With and Without Wands and Chanting to name but three. Mingling is a basic craft when we use Spelling With Brews and Potions and that’s our lesson for today. I’ll make one of the Potions from Spelling Made Easy to show you how it works. It’s a rather old textbook, as you can see, and a bit old-fashioned, but it does include several timeless Spellings …”

      “You are not at all old-fashioned, Miss Strega,” Jessica interrupted, “even though you must be very old.”

      Miss Strega stroked her chin very thoughtfully. She opened the book at Starter Brews. “This is a good one,” she said and she began to read aloud: “Alphabet Soup: first rub your cauldron with a light film of oil. Throw in a handful of letters of the alphabet, a few commas and full stops. Season as required with question marks or exclamation marks and bring to the boil. Correct stirring is essential or you will end up with a soup of meaningless words with no magic properties at all.”

      “But what is it for?” asked Jessica.

      Miss Strega sighed loudly. “Do concentrate, Jessica. Obviously, the Alphabet Soup Spell is used to plant a word or an idea in someone’s head.”

      “What sort of idea?”

      “Say, for example, that someone is doing something really irritating and you want them to stop—”

      “Like what?”

      “Anything irritating!” Miss Strega sounded rather snappish. “So, you grease your cauldron, like so, throw in a handful of the letters of the alphabet and—”

      “Yes, but which letters?”

      “Moonrays and marrowbones, Jessica! Any or all of them will do. It doesn’t matter a whit. It’s the way you Mingle that puts the right words in the person’s brain.”

      “But I don’t understand what the Mingling is … and how does the person know what to think?”

      Miss Strega sighed and drank a thimbleful of her own stiff brew. “Now pay attention,” she ordered. “I’m starting to Mingle.” Holding her left hand behind her back like a television cook, she extravagantly sprinkled a few exclamation marks into the cauldron. “Now take the feather of a long-eared owl …”

      “Does it have to be a long-eared owl? Would a short-eared one not work?”

      “ …and draw it backwards and forwards over your soup like this.” Miss Strega closed her eyes and drew the long feather rapidly over the soup. “Backwards and forwards, figures-of-eight,” she chanted, “round and about, a criss and a cross, then loop the loop.”

      “Do you have to close your eyes?” Jessica asked. “How many times must you …”

      Jessica’s voice trailed off into silence. All of a sudden, the words

       STOP INTERRUPTING!!!

      had popped up in her brain and were flashing on and off like warning lights. She covered her face with her hands and peered through her fingers.

      Miss Strega was doing her best not to laugh. She had covered her chin with her hand and pressed her lips together but her shoulders were shaking up and down and tears were rolling down her cheeks.

      “May I try to Mingle?” Jessica asked, all polite.

      “Of course, my dear.”

      Jessica lightly oiled a cauldron. She threw in a handful of letters and seasoned her mixture with a single exclamation mark. She began to Mingle, doing the figures-of-eight routine, the side-to-side, the round and abouts, the crissing and crossing, then looping the loop.